A 26-Year-Old with Headaches Who Was Getting Confused Thought She Was Stressed. She Had Brain Cancer.
- Sunny Thukral, 26, thought her headaches and confusion were caused by school stress, grief, and a breakup.
- She was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an incurable, aggressive brain cancer more common among older men.
- Thukral is prepared to beat the odds and her experience has influenced her career goals as a vet.
First, Sunny Thukral's grandfather died when she wasn't by his side. "That hit me really hard," the 26-year-old said.
Then, she began her final year at UC Davis Veterinary School, which has been ranked No. 1 in the world. "I was insanely stressed because I wanted to do a good job," she said.
Around the same time, Thukral went through a breakup — another "cherry on top" of her accumulating emotional load, she said.
So when Thukral developed increasingly intense headaches in spring 2022 and began tripping over even the simplest calculations in school, she thought it was a physical manifestation of her grief and stress.
